Bad Habits?

I have a bad habit. It’s not drinking, drugs, or gambling. My bad habit is too many commas.

“Hello, my name is Alex, and I’m an over comma-er”. It’ true, I love commas.

 I tend to write like I talk and being a native Texan, I tend to take very short pauses quite often when I talk. While this is not necessarily a bad thing when communicating verbally, it isn’t all that great when writing. It could be that I’m not that comfortable with other forms of punctuation like colons and semi colons, or it could just be that I don’t really know when I it is unnecessary to insert a comma.

I know that I use too many commas, and I make a very conscious effort to only use them when I have to. I think the only real way to break this bad habit is to first acknowledge that I have a problem and take steps to minimize it. One the bright side, you will probably never find me chattering at 100 miles per hours or creating run on sentences when I write.

Do you have any bad writing habits? If so, what have you done to change them?